Rate My Professor Charles Van Loan

Charles Van Loan is Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, with expertise in numerical linear and multilinear algebra within the field of Mathematics. He received his B.S. in 1969, M.S. in 1970, and Ph.D. in 1973, all in mathematics from the University of Michigan. Van Loan joined the Cornell University Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor in 1975. Over his career, he served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for eight years, Director of the Master of Engineering Program for three years, Director of Graduate Studies for five years, and Chair of the department from 1999 to 2006. In 1998, he was appointed the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering. After retiring from the department in 2016, he became the first emeritus professor to serve as Dean of Faculty from 2016 to 2021, extending his term by an additional year during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this role, he chaired committees revising the academic calendar, developing policies on consensual relationships and emeritus status, improving research misconduct handling, and enhancing faculty representation in the Senate. He also co-chaired groups proposing a Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures.

Van Loan's research centers on matrix computations and scientific computing. His co-authored book Matrix Computations with G.H. Golub (third edition 1996, fourth edition 2013) is one of the most widely cited texts in mathematics and computer science, with over 83,000 citations. Other significant publications include "Nineteen Dubious Ways to Compute the Exponential of a Matrix, Twenty-Five Years Later" with C. Moler (2003), "An Analysis of the Total Least Squares Problem" with Golub (1980), Computational Frameworks for the Fast Fourier Transform (1992), and Insight Through Computing: A MATLAB Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering with K.Y. Daisy Fan (2009). He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and received the SIAM John von Neumann Lecture Prize in 2018. Van Loan also earned the Robert Paul Advising Award (1998), James and Martha D. McCormick Advising Award (2003), Merrill Scholar Faculty Impact Award (1998 and 2009), and James and Mary Tien Teaching Award (2009) from Cornell.